Intel to include DRM in new Pentium 4 series processors

[Alastair Scott]

On Wed, 2002-09-11 at 10:51, Bill Thompson wrote:

> Then, for example, when a national government says 'the restrictions on
> copying enforced by the DRM hardware for ebooks are too extreme and
> limit
> fair use rights' software to crack those formats and read them can be 
> developed and run on the LVM-hosted network despite protestatations
> from the US.

Something which, I think, hasn't been noticed in this and similar
discussion is that PalmOS already has protection mechanisms along
similar lines to what is being proposed for TCPA DRM, albeit much less
slick and only in software.

Each PalmOS machine has a unique serial number (the 'ROM ID') and a user
name (the 'HotSyncName'). It's easy to create some sort of hash
involving these which has to be reported to a program owner in order for
them to generate a serial number without which the application cannot
run.

I know this because, having bought a new PalmOS machine, several
registered applications no longer work and a long rigmarole of reporting
the hashes, receiving serial numbers and entering them once again is
ongoing :/

Clearly these mechanisms could be got round by patching the PalmOS
executable or manually changing* the hotsync name or ROM ID to those for
a known working installation, but I feel that what I'm having to do now
is a taster of much bigger things to come ...

Alastair

* http://www.mulliner.org/palm/changename.php